Knauf Settles with Chinese Drywall Homeowners

Knauf Settles with Chinese Drywall Homeowners~

The long, drawn-out saga of contaminated Chinese drywall in
the U.S. market reached a milestone in December, as worldwide
manufacturing giant Knauf offered to settle with thousands of
American homeowners enrolled in a consolidated lawsuit in the
New Orleans federal courtroom of Judge Eldon E. Fallon.
Coastal Connection first mentioned the Chinese drywall
problem back in March of 2009
(“
In Florida, A Plague of Bad Drywall”). Since that
time, we’ve returned to the story dozens of times for
updates, as drywall suppliers met homeowner and builder
complaints with stonewalling, excuses, and evasions, as experts
analyzed the material to understand the source of its corrosive
fumes and obnoxious odors, and as lawyers representing
manufacturers, builders, and homeowners faced off in a complex
three-way process in Judge Fallon’s court. For a
retrospective of Coastal Connection’s coverage, search
for “Chinese drywall” on the
CoastalContractor.net website.
The pilot program’s purpose was to demonstrate the
efficacy of the prescribed remedies, and to get a better handle
on the true costs involved. Now that the pilot program has had
time to generate useful information, Knauf has extended its
settlement offer to cover more than 4,000 additional homeowners
who were not already involved in the remediation program.
Bloomberg News has this report
(“
Chinese Drywall Maker to Pay Homeowners to Settle Contamination
Lawsuits,” by Jef Feeley and Allen Johnson
Jr.).
However, Knauf has committed to remediate any house whose
owners are enrolled in the New Orleans lawsuit class, and who
can demonstrate that the house was built using the faulty
product, no matter how high the tab for Knauf. The full text of
the settlement agreement is now posted as a 264-page PDF file
on the federal court’s website
(“
In Re: Chinese Manufactured Drywall Products Liability
Litigation”).
Builder and remodeler Eric Stockland, who runs Charter Bay
Homes in the Tampa, Fla. area, has been following the drywall
story closely because Charter Bay is actively involved in the
remediation business. (Stockland’s videos, posted on
YouTube and on his Chinese drywall blog, are a highly useful
source of information about remediation business practices and
on-site techniques.) In a blog post on the settlement terms
(“Chinese Drywall Relief Coming For Many Tampa Chinese
Drywall Homeowners”), Stockton called the agreement
good news for Florida homeowners: “The announcement is
better than many of us who follow the committee even
expected.”
Members of the court’s class of plaintiffs will
have three choices, notes Stockland: They can use the
court’s selected contractor from the pilot program,
Moss Construction; they can choose their own contractor, who
will be paid via draws from the settlement award; or they can
accept a lump sum. (According to the settlement document, the
lump sum amounts to $8.50 a square foot for houses smaller than
3,500 square feet, and $10 a square foot for houses larger than
3,500 square feet.)
But as Stockland points out, not all the bad Chinese drywall
came from Knauf. “Unfortunately,” Stockton
writes, “those homeowners who have Chinese drywall
made by another manufacturer will not be helped by this
settlement. Knauf is the most prominent of the Chinese drywall
manufacturers, but there are at least nine (9) other Chinese
drywall manufacturers which are not part of this lawsuit. Here
in Tampa, in addition to Knauf, it is also common to find homes
with non-Knauf Chinese drywall.”